Americans attempting to get redress from
the Islamic Republic of Iran want to take possession of the artifacts,
currently on loan at the Oriental Institute.

For nearly 10 years, a lawsuit against the state of Iran has turned
the Oriental Institute into a battleground over 2,500-year-old Persian
artifacts.

This past Saturday, Professor Matthew Stolper, head of the
Institute’s Persepolis Fortification Archive Project, gave an update on
what he called a “salvage excavation” and revealed the innovative
technology that might decide the artifacts’ future.

More than just “pieces of dirt that someone poked with sticks a very
long time ago,” the archive is “the largest, the most complex, the best
dated source of information from within the Persian Empire at its
zenith,” Stolper said.

The tens of thousands of fragments, pieces of old administrative
records excavated from Persepolis ruins in the 1930s, have been a
treasure chest for understanding Persian language, religion, daily life
and politics. “This loan was an extraordinary thing—an extraordinary
act of trust,” Stolper said, since the Institute has been allowed to
keep the artifacts on loan from Iran during the pending law suit.

“A completely unique discovery is sent off to an American research
institute and it is sent intact—it is sent as if they knew it was all
one thing. This is almost without precedent in the annals of cultural
study,” Stolper said.

If the plaintiffs, Americans who lost relatives in 1997 terrorist
attacks in Israel, win, the tablets may be sold and dispersed. If they
lose, then Iran may demand the artifacts’ immediate return, according to
Stolper. The plaintiffs were already awarded redress money that Iran
refused to pay, so the plaintiffs are seeking this Iranian property in
the U.S. as an alternative form of payment.Stolper took a moment to remind the audience that the plaintiffs had
lost their loved ones in a terrorist attack and reacted within the legal
channels granted by the judicial system. “There’s a tendency to say
[about the lawsuit], ‘What a terrible barbaric thing,”” Stolper said.
“The plaintiffs are not greedy barbarians. They are seeking redress.”

The Institute has responded with innovative steps to preserve the
artifacts, digitally and on the Internet. By publicly sharing infrared
and photo-edited images of the tablets, alongside intensive linguistic
analysis, the Institute is pushing archaeological record-keeping into
the 21st century. “Sometimes the images are more useful than the
original objects,” Stolper said.

Stolper left his audience and future generations, he hopes, with a
challenge. “If I can’t convince you it’s something you should be excited
about, at least I can convince you it’s something one can be excited
about,” he said.